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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-...

> Moreover, notes Werde, within the pie chart detailing the total revenue that Spotify generates through music streaming, “roughly 70% of it is going to rights holders,” he says. The actual recording artists? “They’re keeping anywhere between 5% and a quarter.”

The impact on actual album sales likely hits hard, too; I recall an artist on NPR talking about how one CD sale nets them more into their actual pocket than a hundred thousand streams.

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Spotify is not responsible for the terrible contracts linking artists to right holders. If artists want a fairer revenue split, they should just negotiate it with the distribution companies they chose to sign with.

After all this time if Spotify could have found a way to cut off the middlemen, they would have happily done it. From your own quote, you should be mad at Universal & co, not Spotify.

> From your own quote, you should be mad at Universal & co, not Spotify.

The point is that "helped to almost double music industry revenue" from upthread doesn't actually help the folks I want helped; it's a misleading stat.

Help them then. Spotify did no wrong and doesn't care about your selfless sentiment.

Spotify are indeed increasingly cutting out the middlemen by filling out their playlists with "fake" artists: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/remember-spotify-fake...

Artists who don't sell their souls to record labels are doing perfectly fine on Spotify. You just can't have it both ways.

Your citation is self-contradictory - if artist is also rights holder (which is not that rare I think) they will receive more than quarter.

70% percent of Spotify revenue goes to the right holders vs ~40% of a CD sale. That artist must have signed really bad deal, or he/she is selling CDs themself which makes comparison really misleading.

As far as I am aware it is pretty rare for an artist to also be the rights holder. Typically "signing with a major record label" involves signing over the rights. Who then hold on to them or resell them. For example, Michael Jackson owned the rights to The Beatles so that 70% went to him\his estate not members of the band.

Not to excuse the consolidated, monopolistic recording industry, but isn't there some point at which artists are responsible for not signing away their masters?

If you're a newer artist just starting out, you most likely aren't going to get signed with any big name label if you refuse to sign away your masters. The masters are how the label can make money off of you for probably a hundred years, even if you leave them. They gotta make their money back somehow.

You may be able to do it with a smaller label that is very friendly to artists, but you most likely aren't going to be able to access the most in-demand producers, have a label pay for all of your bills/food/rent/etc while you focus on the album.

Seems like a newer artist could use the power of the internet and YouTube and directly go to Spotify to negotiate. There is near zero cost to reach a global audience.

But if they want to procure the services of the publishers, then they have to agree to the terms.

The power of the internet and YouTube is a lot more manufactured than you may think. See the recent ACBDEFU origin drama (artist posts about trying to come up with a song, Marketing Manager from her record label just so happens to comment the idea on her video, song sees strong commercial success just a week later).

It's totally possible an artist makes a break on the internet. Sarah Crean blew up from 200 monthly listeners to almost 200,000 overnight because a music TikToker posted about how great her songs are as an independent artist. (TBH it is, go check it out)

Being independent is totally a way you can go, but if you'd want to make money in the industry to really live off of you have 2 options:

- Work a job (or 2) for hours a day to keep yourself fed/housed while also doing the job of 5-10 people to try to get your music noticed enough to make money directly from fans. - Sign up with a label, immediately get your daily life taken care of and focus on your music full time.

Sadly, for a lot of artists, the promise of being able to quit your job and focus on your passion full time is an offer too lucrative to turn down. It's an exploitative industry, but when it works it works. And when it fails, it's the artist that's left on the side of the highway. Labels are like casinos, the house never loses.

This has always been the case for revenue from recordings.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/743775196/the-success-of-stre...

> So none of [the royalty system] makes sense... if a song is played on the radio, 100% of the royalties go to the songwriter. But if the same song is played on a streaming service, only about 20% of the royalties go to the songwriter. Where does that come from?"

Radio uses public airwaves, and is largely an exception to how the music business works. Not even recording artists get revenue from radio plays, only the songwriters (aka copyright holders).

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